Technical Field
The present invention relates to a device and to a method for determining the angular position or orientation in three-dimensional space, and to a corresponding electronic apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
As is known, there are several systems in which detection of the angular position or orientation (the so-called “attitude” and “heading”) of a device in space is required, for example in portable or wearable electronic apparatuses, for inertial navigation applications, for providing user interfaces, in automotive systems, in robotic systems, and so forth.
For this purpose, inertial sensors are used, in particular accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers, as well as appropriate processing devices, which process the information detected by the inertial sensors in order to determine the angular orientation.
Known devices in general envisage use of recursive Kalman filters, built entirely via software, or with some hardware parts. However, these solutions involve a high computational cost for computing an estimate of the angular position with a desired precision, in particular in the case where a good tolerance is required to interference (such as, for example, linear accelerations or magnetic anomalies), which could cause even significant variations of the estimate made.
Moreover, the need is felt, in particular in the field of portable or wearable electronic apparatuses, to reduce electric power consumption and memory size (flash and RAM), and at the same time to increase, or at least not degrade, performance. This need evidently clashes with the high demand for resources of the solutions normally used for angular position estimation.
The subject matter discussed in the Background section is not necessarily prior art and should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its discussion in the Background section. Along these lines, the recognition of one or more problems in the prior art discussed in the Background section and the subject matter associated therewith should not be treated as prior art unless expressly stated to be prior art. Instead, the discussion in the Background section encompassing one or more recognized problems in the prior art should be treated as part of the inventor's approach to the particular problem, which in and of itself may also be inventive.